Mumbai: “Do you take trains or buses in Mumbai?” Nikhil Aggarwal asks. “What’s the biggest problem that you face in the public transport?” He is well rehearsed, as any seasoned marketer would be. He waits for the answers he knows he will get — traffic delays, long waits, queues — and then whips out his mobile phone. “Zophop solves this issue.”
On the screen, he types in a destination: Churchgate. Two options pop up: one is the fastest route, including permutations of train, bus and walking options, what you could find via Google maps; the other is cheapest. This second option, Mr. Aggarwal says, is very important for commuters.
Zophop, the company behind the app, was started by Mohit Dubey (who has now moved to a Chairman of the board position, to give him more time for his other role as co-founder of Carwale.com) and Vinayak Bhavnani in 2014, who is Chief Technology Officer and CEO, with four employees. Initially bootstrapped, in 2015 the company raised angel investment from Anupam Mittal, founder of matchmaking site shaadi.com, and Satyan Gajwani, Managing Director of Times Internet, among others. Mr. Aggarwal, a former investment banker, joined them last year, as Chief Operating Officer.
Explaining their business rationale, Mr. Bhavnani says, “Indian cities can barely sustain with the existing public infrastructure. We also noticed the number of modes of transport increasing. The bus ticketing market is around $25 billion.” Zophop now has 15 employees in Navi Mumbai and Nagpur, and offers real-time data there as well as in Indore, Kolkata and Noida. In ten other cities, it provides static information on timings of public transport.
Real-time info
The app, Mr. Aggarwal claims, is “The only app in India that gives you real-time info on timings and estimated arrival time of local buses.” The app also solves the problem of getting bus passes, by selling them online, he says. “There are only 25 bus depots across the city where you can get the passes. People have to set aside time for a trip to the depots.” The company has collaborated with the BEST in Mumbai and with government bus agencies in other cities to make the passes available. It also has tie-ups with Uber and Jugnoo (in cities where the app is operational), which lets users get a taxi or an auto vusing the app, which he says is another unique feature. Zophop now has 250,000 downloads on Google’s Playstore, Mr. Aggarwal says, but he refuses to divulge the daily usage data.
Everything on the app, including the maps and other information, is proprietary, Mr. Aggarwal says. “We have installed around 1000 GPS systems in the local buses to get real-time data on buses.” The app also uses data from 5000 GPS systems already installed by the government on buses.
Paying the bills
Revenue currently comes from a three per cent commission on the bus passes the app sells. A possible future revenue stream is usage data: “For transport agencies and other companies,” Mr. Bhavnani says, “this data can be crucial to gauge demand and supply. For instance, if a company wants a bus plying a new route, it can get the number of users in that area from our app database.”
The company has a simple marketing strategy. “Unlike big companies like Flipkart that think that everyone is a target customer, we focus on people travelling by public transport,” Mr. Aggarwal says. “We put up posters on buses and send our marketing executives to people waiting in long queues at bus stops across the city.”
The app’s limitations include that it is currently available only on the Android platform — the founders say this was a “conscious decision taken to focus on the most popular platform” — its limited geography, and its dependence on access to data from government-owned transport agencies, which requires getting permissions and approvals.
The founders are not too concerned with Google and other tech companies adopting the idea. “Google, for instance, is not involved in transactional play, like buying bus passes, and has a more distributive model.” Mr. Bhavnani says. However if Google chooses to enter the market, he says that it certainly can. “Google has this feature in more developed economies like the US. But in India, there are a lot of hurdles. It will need employees at the ground level as bus timings change quickly on an ad-hoc basis.”
New roads
The company is now working on expanding to three other cities, Ahmedabad, Pune and Surat. “Besides metros, even in Tier II cities, the number of public transport passengers are increasing rapidly,” Mr. Bhavnani says. “Bus Rapid Transit Systems are also coming up in a number of cities.” Expansion to a new city will take less than two weeks, provided the required approvals and data access from the government come in smoothly.
Besides expansion across cities in India, the company is targeting international markets as well.
